Introduction

Welcome to the blog of a philanthropist, astrologer, japanophile, webdesigner, proud ICT generalist and student aiming for a masters degree in work and organisation / occupational health psychology. Discover my world, some of the things that keep me entertained, how our minds work and how our minds are put to work.

14 Apr 2011

Root access to WordPress servers

I finally read something worth reading on my used-to-be-favorite Dutch IT news site. WordPress.com servers were hacked. Usually the people there are not n00bies, so when they comment it’s usually not *facepalm*. This time I read it and went, “n00b influx” omg. I’m not one of these people that logs in and goes “What do you know Joey! It’s like this I said” to other people on that thread. That’s for elite pricks.

There was one rather weird statement in the article itself. It says without blinking “affects self hosted installations because they download updates”. Uhh. No. Anyone with any brains at all will never insert a password which will allow software to download it’s own update. As soon as they released that functionality I went “You’ve got to be kidding me”. It was the same with the “update notification”, but because WordPress rarely to never gives any problems after updating my annoyance about it quickly subsided.

Still, if they want to have you – they will have you. It’s as simple as that.

Off topic: You might think it’s strange, but I do not use any “remember my password” functionality on my browser either. I make myself remember usernames and passwords that way. I also cannot believe addons such as Firefox Sync have a “Sync my passwords” option. You’re not using that, are you?

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2 Apr 2011

WordPress Jetpack, Disqus

Here are some things I recently learned about:

WordPress.com features can now be installed on self-hosted blogs (like this one) by a plugin called “Jetpack”. I installed it locally just to see how the plugin looks, I know it won’t function.

I’ve looked at the options, and concluded I’m not that interested in it. Has little options I just have to have. Some of it is already included in other plugins I’m running. Statistics I’d rather have Google Analytics do, a Twitter widget can be build into themes and shortcode embeds are not my thing. The last may seem surprising, but 99% of the time I embed content from Youtube, the fags remove it. Like I’d want to have a blog filled with “black nothings”.

Then Tumblr had the service Disqus in their customize theme options. I’m sure it has it’s use, but from the options I saw I don’t need it.

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